Roll Tonight
by shipperchick


Disclaimer: The characters and situations of 'Smallville' belong to Warner Brothers, TRP Productions, DC Comics and other related entities. No profit is being made from this endeavor. Lyrics are from 'Run Away', off of Live's new album 'Birds of Pray' (good album!), and are used without permission.   
  
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Roll Tonight  
  
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This ain't no night to be on your own  
  
You've got to know where you're coming from   
  
To know just where you're goin', lord   
  
You've got to know where you're coming from  
  
This ain't no night to be on your own  
  
The tableau was reformed seamlessly on the surface. Pete with his jocular cheer, Clark and Lana with earnest conversations and meaningful pauses, Chloe, and Lex -- once again the slightly distant demigod. Their circle renewed itself around small tiled tables and steaming mugs, spinning away into clouds of teenage angst and returning to momentary tranquility.   
  
They'd all grown very good at ignoring the cracks just below the porcelain face, marbled by infinite alteration; guilty pauses when someone mentioned the past summer, gentle touches between two star-crossed lovers finding their way back to each other.   
  
The greatest changes were hers. She'd always been mercurial, a ray of light crashing through crystal prisms, thousands of colors flying out simultaneously. Now, now she was sheet glass, sanded smooth by pain and anger to an impenetrable sheen. They all knew not to look too closely at her, for she refused to play the game, even as she participated in the farce. They watched her carefully from the corners of their eyes, waiting for a sign of relenting that never came. She remained stubbornly shifted, resolute silence where before there was guileless chatter. They'd become experts at not noticing, and the charade continued quietly on.   
  
It ended with a touch.  
  
-------  
  
Lex watched her with a keening in his heart, filled with both envy and remorse. He --should-- feel anger at her revolution, --should-- reach out with advice and the knowledge of one who'd walked miles in her shoes. He --must-- warn her of the danger she faced in allying herself to evil, soulless evil that delighted in nothing but pain and triumph.   
  
But Lex found himself frozen -- as he had been for months, six since his rescue, two since his release, mere weeks since his return. He was paralyzed, trapped beneath the morass of emotions that threatened at every moment to overcome him. There was no release from the cacophony of feelings that bombarded him from all sides, and that had always been his problem - feeling too damn much, certainly too much for a Luthor. And sometimes, he hated her, this slip of a girl that had done so easily what he could not, turned off her hurt and anger and anguish and so many more that there were no names for. Meaningless words crashed and thundered through his skull, ballooning with agony, and she was impregnable. Invulnerable.   
  
A wash of yet more emotion besieged him; disgust that he could envy a girl clearly falling from grace at his father's behest, and guilt that all his force was focused on maintaining a mask over the broiling sea of weakness he had become. There was no energy left to save her, just barely enough to save himself. And he would stand idly by as she became stone from flesh, another victim of his father's ploys.   
  
She brushed his arm, and the finest spray of fiery warmth spread up his veins. Suddenly, it became too much. He needed to get away, return to the safe, dark, cool of the castle that was his refuge in its emptiness. He lurched up gracelessly, exited wordlessly, quickly. Too quickly, or he'd have noticed the gaping faces left behind. Not unexpected in the rest, but in the cool blonde, cold as ice, showing the first real emotion in much too long, it was a revelation. There was a discovery in her eyes, something sharp and hot and real. The air was suddenly tinged with expectation, and the knowledge that something momentous had just occurred.   
  
--------  
  
--I need your blissful touch to carry me away again  
  
So can we roll tonight, roll through your desert, can we start over and just...--  
  
A FEW DAYS LATER  
  
The doorbell rang a summons, and the sound reverberated through the dimly lit halls. Lex rolled his head along the leather shoulder of the chair he was slumped in, brow crinkling in irritation as the sound shattered silence yet again. Why was noone answering…?  
  
His face smoothed as he remembered the curt conversation minutes after his father's departure, dismissing all the staff for the remainder of the weekend. A self-indulgence that would come with a hefty price, once his father learned of his brooding; evidence of his careful façade's transitory nature, crumbling every time Lionel left him in peace for even a short while. Lex's gaze returned to its careful contemplation of the ceiling, trying very hard to think about nothing at all, not consequences, not betrayal, not recovery.   
  
The door summoned him again, insistently, and Lex huffed impatiently. Slowly shuffling to his feet, grasping the silver topped cane that would be his companion for a while yet… another cheerful souvenir from his aborted honeymoon.   
  
A long stroll towards the heavy doors, and his breath huffed out in surprise when he glimpsed the unwelcome visitor through the monitor embedded in the wall. It was Chloe.   
  
The doors creaked as they opened, and she turned to face him, her eyes leaving their sweeping investigation of the flat landscape sliding off infinitely in all directions.  
  
  
  
His voice when he spoke was gravelly, rusty from disuse and disinclination.   
  
"Ms. Sullivan. My father's not here right now, and anything you require from his office will have to wait until his return."  
  
Her eyes flashed at his barely civil tone, but only for an instant before subsiding behind the blank mask she'd perfected under Lionel Luthor's tutelage.   
  
"I'm not here for your father, Lex. I'm here for you."  
  
The words were uninflected, their impact, if he but knew it, infinite. Her voice was leaded, filled with carefully suppressed emotion, and Lex wondered what had happened.  
  
"What's happened?" His curiosity largely unpiqued, his main reaction was one of fatigue, mulling over what his father was doing to increase Lex's discomfiture now.  
  
She stepped into his domain uninvited, pushing him back with her presence. Her hair was tumbled from the wind outside, and she carried an aura of dust and excitement on her.   
  
Her reaction to his question was earth-shattering. Mobile lips pushed against his, as insistently as her will had pushed his an instant before. They were soft and dry, kindling against his skin. A match ignited within, and a familiar blaze spread from his lips outward. He pulled away, gasping for air.   
  
"What the hell are you thinking, Ms. Sullivan? Does my father honestly think I'll fall for a trick as old as this one?"  
  
Chloe's response was silent, another assault on his mouth, small hard hands pulling insistently down on the nape of his neck. She pushed harder, deeper, this time, tongue prying apart his lips as she shuffled closer. He felt her message in the taste of her sliding down his throat.   
  
She broke the embrace this time, their harsh rasping breath the only sound filling the space around them. He licked his lips, tasting her again, and he knew her answer there. She tasted like anger and bitterness and a lowing wail for comfort, a welter of agony that curdled on his tongue. Her eyes flicked back and forth; searching his for recognition of the truth she'd offered him. He had only one question left.   
  
"Why me?"  
  
"This."  
  
Her fingers were silk swatches as they traced the skin over his clavicle, a trail of warmth left glowing in their wake. Four eyes followed their path with quiet wonder. His gaze met hers with a question still unanswered, his hand reaching up to still hers with a too-warm grip, and she sighed her impatience.   
  
"When I touch you Lex… it doesn't have a name. It's not angry, or bitter, or sad, or enraged. It's just… sensation."   
  
Her eyes were molten with her discovery, and he found himself smiling involuntarily at her enthusiasm, at the return of her changeable nature.  
  
"Don't… don't you feel it too?"   
  
Her voice betrayed her vulnerability, a softness that was even more endearing. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the distant but comforting quicksilver presence that had been Chloe Sullivan before teenage drama had changed her irrevocably.   
  
His answer was the same as hers, as his lips captured hers in a fiery salute. The taste of anguish there turned his stomach further now, and his decision was made as his cane clattered to the floor and his hands came up to cup her face. Pressing his mouth firmly to hers, he tried by force of will alone to drive that taste from her lips with the cauterizing heat that flared up between them.   
  
He couldn't, and he broke the embrace, searching her eyes for the key.   
  
"Why now, Chloe?"  
  
If he had been harsh or uncaring, as before, she could have withstood the query. But his voice carried that subtle hint of compassion that had flavored his speech before, and the return of Lex of old, masterful at drawing out truths, was enough to undo her.   
  
She pulled away; head ducking as he stared down at her in concern. Her voice when she spoke again was ripe with the same agony he'd tasted on her lips, and broken in ways that he didn't care to contemplate.   
  
"Clark… and Lana. They were making love," her voice caught in a harsh, grating sob at the words, but she forced the rest out, "in my house. In my --house--, Lex!"   
  
Her head reared up, eyes darting wildly with desperation filling them, even as she stood statue-still, small hands curling up into tight fists that would leave angry half-circles on her tender palms.   
  
--  
  
I've got the scars to prove that love has had its day and its way with me  
  
So can we roll tonight, roll through your desert, can we start over and just...--  
  
Her entire body vibrated with emotion, and he wondered that he had even thought her invulnerable, her face as much a façade as his own, as transitory and fragile. She voiced the thought as it flew across his mind.  
  
"And you… you --understand-- Lex! You're the only one who does!"   
  
Her tone was accusing, challenging the sense of it all. And he could not deny the truth of it.   
  
It wasn't about political correctness or friendship or forgiveness. It wasn't about having the --right-- to feel the way they felt. It was about their feelings, turmoiled and tortured, wrong and right and --real-- as those emotions were. And no matter how often they were told it didn't matter, what mattered was being strong, and brave, and moving on, it didn't minimize the importance of those feelings, or their vividness in either heart.   
  
What mattered was comfort, a transient ease of the pain. What mattered was soothing, a balm to cover wounds that would take time to heal, regardless of their source. What mattered was solace in their time of grief. And it seemed that they were meant to find their solace in each other.  
  
She watched the thoughts pass over his face, and her face lifted from drooping grief to determination at their conclusion. She walked forward once more, a swirling tempest of sentiment, and overwhelmed him with her similarity.  
  
"You see? Lex? Do you really see?"  
  
His silent nod was filled with misgivings, for shared heartache or no, there was very little logic in all this, and he'd fought to cling to sensibility when sentiment overwhelmed him.   
  
"Then do it, Lex. --Do it-- for God's sake!."  
  
--"Looks like I've lost my will to carry on, my friend," she said  
  
And you can hear it in my whispered cries for love--  
  
And she was upon him, a molten cascade seeping into his pores as her hands found purchase within his shirt, scraping at the skin above his heart as she bit his lip. She was a wild thing, demanding succor, willing his surrender to the inevitability of their needs.   
  
The feelings welling up now were as wild as she, but this time they carried him on a wave of exultation and grim resolve. Her mouth carried the flavor of ashen dreams, burnt beyond recognition, poisoning the spirit beneath. He vowed with the lips and hands that crashed into hers to wipe the taste away, clear the taint with what power there might be within him. It had nothing at all to do with logic, and made every kind of sense imaginable.  
  
------  
  
--Run away, run away tonight  
  
It ain't no victory but I don't care, I don't care if it's wrong or right  
  
We can just run away, run away tonight  
  
It ain't no victory but I don't care, I don't care if It's wrong or right--  
  
They made it as far as the couch in one of his numerous studies, his shirt half open and hers entirely gone. It was a river rapid of breathless sensation as his hands discovered skin that was like vodka to him, clear and searingly bright. His lips on her curves were like the spill of desert sand, shivery-smooth and sun-warmed, as he discovered that he could taste her heart through her   
  
chest.   
  
She discovered color again in the feel of his teeth on her earlobe, a shattering explosion of lavenders and light-greens that were more complex than primary, and she thought she would go over the edge just like that.  
  
  
  
But there was more, so much more to be found. She felt the explosion of sunflower yellow-and-orange when he eased off her bra and took one rigid nipple into his mouth, her back arching and mouth scrambling to remember breath.  
  
He pushed her into the supple leather of the couch with the lean length of his body, and his skin against the breadth of hers was enough to undo her, remake her into something fresh and clean.  
  
New hands sketched the space between his shoulders as he settled between her thighs. They trembled with a surfeit of joy as they reached for his buckle and undid him, drawing him out of constricting confines.   
  
He had only a moment to look into her eyes and wonder at the rich complexity he found there before he asked, clumsy as he had only ever once before been,  
  
"Have you ever…?"  
  
Her short, terse, "yes" was a question for another day, and for now there was only the fumbling for safety before he slid inside her and found a whole new taste - strawberry warmth that exploded in his mouth from the wet tight heat of her and the startled joy in her eyes.  
  
He gasped when he found her center; embarrassing but true. It had never been like this before, to know the solace of another who felt pain as he did, who felt *his* pain and made it her own, and gave her own back to be remade by their sharing. It was just a little bit sick and twisted, but nothing had ever felt so right.   
  
Open-mouthed and intense, they locked eyes and rocked urgently together; it was rough and clumsy and intoxicating in its fit. She gasped as he grunted, and when it was too much to bear he buried his face in the curve of her arched neck. He marveled with fractured thought at her flavor, complex enough to stymie his palate, but nothing of pain or anger - only sweat and a sheer, primal joy of communion, fleeting though it was.   
  
She discovered a rainbow hue by hue as his skin touched hers in thousands of permutations, each touch coiling her tighter, tighter, until finally she shattered into a thousand fragments, scraping her nails across his scalp as her spine tested its limits and she was reborn - multichromatic.   
  
Her wail of half-understood ecstasy was enough for him to slide further, harder, until he found home and broke apart in a cool blue sea of elated tranquility. He was at peace.  
  
Much later, he lifted himself and stared at her, flushed and dewy, a thousand different colors; maskless and defiant. He smiled and offered his hand. They went upstairs to find what solace they might, until the new sun dawned.  
  
--This ain't no night to be on your own  
  
Run away, run away tonight  
  
It ain't no victory but I don't care,   
  
I don't care if its wrong or right  
  
We can just run away, run away tonight  
  
It ain't no victory but I don't care  
  
I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care  
  
Run away  
  
Run away  
  
Run away--  
  
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END 


End file.
